Catching Up on Memories

I've spent the weekend building a memory book of my time with Liam in May and June. We were joined at the hip in the last couple of weeks before Baby Charlotte was born and for several weeks afterward. Oh, the adventures we had! Swimming, exploring, coloring, creating - never a dull moment.

Since I left my Liam-duties behind over a month ago, I find I've missed him like crazy. Those 3-year-olds find a way to burrow deep into your heart, even when you're plain tuckered out trying to keep up with them.

It seemed a good weekend to collect photos of that sweet time and put them in a book for posterity. Or for Liam, if he chooses to keep the book after I'm long gone. I got to relive our trips to the Center for Puppetry Arts, Atlanta Botanical Garden, various parks and indoor activity spots, his swim lessons, and, of course, that sweet day he got to meet his baby sister.

I made this particular book via Snapfish, but I also use Shutterfly and Picaboo (whichever one is giving the best online discount at the time). I find I have to be in the right mood to create my books because it does take time to organize the pictures on the pages and remember the events and places for the text. I will say that it's so much easier to fashion lovely memory books with these online programs. Gone are the days of sticking photos into scrapbooks with those little gummed corners.

Reliving my weeks with Liam made the whole exercise of uploading photos, choosing which ones to use, and sorting them in a sensible manner worthwhile. Now, to start a book for Charlotte!

Wild Blue Yonder Travelin'

Everybody needs a good travelin' song. Seems Liam and I have hit upon ours.

Who knows why, but every time we'd climb into the car, buckle up, and pull out of the driveway or a parking lot, I'd start singing "Off we go into the wild blue yonder!" No reason, really. The song just popped into my head as a sort of "on to the next adventure" theme.

It caught on. Liam picked up on it right away, even though I only know the first and last lines of the thing. Mostly, I just loudly la-di-da'd my way through it, showing my age by singing the final "nothing can stop the Army Air Corps." (Now it's "nothing can stop the US Air Force," by the way.) I freely admitted to GrandBoy that I didn't know the words, since he wasn't fooled by all the la-di-da stuff after such a great first line.

"You don't know all the words, right, GrandMary?"

"No, Liam, I don't. Let's look them up on the computer when we get home."

But for lots of reasons (not the least of which is that I'm beyond learning all those fightin' words at this late stage), even after watching several YouTube renditions, neither of us could get beyond "Off we go into the wild blue yonder, flying high into the sun, la-di-da-da-etc., nothing can beat the Army Air Corps!" Still, it suits us just as it is.

We needed a good traveling song for the adventures we had, none of which involved the wild blue yonder, I might add. The Atlanta Botanical Garden, Legoland, The Center for Puppetry Arts, the neighborhood swimming pool and park, more parks, trips to Target to buy new coloring books, to the YMCA for swimming lessons. Well, we were busy, so in a sense, we were into the wild blue yonder, and our travelin' song captured our enthusiasm whenever we hit the road.

The wild blue yonder. Make of it what you will, it's a heck of a way to travel. Even with the la-di-da parts.